Nickelback was recently the target of a lawsuit that alleged that the band ripped off their 2006 hit, “Rockstar,” from a band called Snowblind Revival.
Songwriter Kirk Johnston penned a 2001 song, “Rock Star,” and Johnston alleged that Nickelback had access to his demo which was submitted to Roadrunner Records’ parent companies, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. Johnston said that Nickelback stole “a substantial amount of the music” from his original song.
Nickelback responded in 2021 saying the two songs sound nothing alike. “Johnston failed to identify any specific lyrical similarities between the works at issue; he could only conceivably point to the titles of the two works and ‘lyrical themes,'” said the band in a statement.
They also called Johnston out on providing no details on his alleged meetings with record labels and the Snowblind Revival demo. Nickelback said that Johnston failed to give “the names of the record label representatives with whom he allegedly met, where the meetings took place, or even when the meetings took place.”
According to a report from Billboard, a U.S. District Judge has ruled there are no similarities in the songs and that there’s no evidence Nickelback ever heard the Snowblind Revival track.
“Stated simply, they do not sound alike,” wrote the judge in his ruling. “Where both songs evoke similar themes, they are rendered dissimilar through the vivid detail of the original expression in Nickelback’s lyrics.”
The judge later said that the lawsuit “borders on the absurd” and that there’s really nothing in common between the two songs aside from a few analogies and “outlandish stereotypes and images associated with being a huge, famous, rock star.”
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